University Affairs

Please note From Aug 4 to 25th I will not be on vacation. Actually, I will be writing my comprehensive exams. Wish me luck and I’ll be back in three weeks!

There is a debate that has been humming in the background of many PhD-granting university campuses for some years now. The topic concerns the career development of PhDs and the issue revolves around deciding whose job it is to provide such support.

One school of thought thinks this should be the responsibility of dissertation supervisor. The 2008 CAGS publication “Guiding Principles for Graduate Student Supervision” expressly supports this position:

“supervisors should be responsible for mentoring students in areas such as, but not limited to, the development of appropriate professional skills; applications for funding; networking opportunities with colleagues in academia and beyond; assistance with publications; and career development.”[p. 4]

The problem of course is that the knowledge most supervisors have of the job market outside academe is scant, to say the least. With so many PhDs setting their sights outside the ivory tower this is no small gap.  But even those PhDs focusing on academic positions will be hard put to get much more than targeted reference letters from their time-strapped supervisors, let alone substantive advice and support.

This is why another group think that university career centres would be a good alternative.  After all, this is where relationships with employers are fostered and the most up-to-date information about work opportunities and job search techniques can be found.  In many career centre in Canada’s largest universities, you will find services and support aimed specifically at PhDs.  Smaller universities simply don’t have the resources to do this.  However, recruitment-related  events and programs are almost exclusively aimed at undergraduate students, particularly at those in professional programs, so there is little a career counselor can do in that regard beyond providing you with lists of employers in various fields, which is a good starting point, but after that you’re on your own.  Then there’s the issue of legitimacy, especially regarding the ability of non-academics to provide accurate advice regarding the academic job market.

In the States, some universities have opted for a third option:  to house the professional development of PhDs under the umbrella of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. This centralized resource has the advantage of reducing replication of services across programs while maintaining a sense of integrity concerning quality control.  However, a pan-university resource may not provide very specific information about idiosyncratic application and hiring practices in specific fields.  It also makes it difficult for students to anonymously inquire about ‘alternative careers’ before you’ve decided which direction you are heading in.  In fact, at some universities with this arrangement, career fairs for grad students need to be housed in off-campus locations so that grad students don’t need to worry about whether someone on their committee will see them entertaining non-academic options for fear of being labeled ‘non-serious’ about their  commitment to scholarship.

The inability to reconcile ‘who’ is ultimately responsible for the career success of PhDs is one of the biggest impediments to providing accessible quality career education to Canadian PhDs. This at a time when there is intense pressure to radically increase the number of grad students in Canada.

Ultimately though, making sure you have the information and support you need to create a career path that works for you is your responsibility.  Yes, your program, supervisor and career centre are valuable resources, and you should use all of them as often as you can.  But it is rarely the case that any one of these resources will be able to give you all the support you need when you need it.

The challenge for universities is to ensure these resources are as up-to-date and accessible as they can be. The challenge for grad students is to take the intiative to use these resources creatively and intelligently to transition successfully in to the workplace.

It’s time to stop finger-pointing and start focusing on how best to successfully integrate the skilled and able graduates our country produces — like you — into positions that reflect your abilites and aspirations.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a country to help a PhD reach their potential.  We can’t afford to wait for the economy to strengthen to do that.

I was reading Sabine Hikels’s excellent blog Leaving Academia the other day, and noticed her July 15th post entitled ‘The MA versus the PhD’. It’s worth a read – in fact, the whole blog is worth subscribing to. In this post, the pros and cons of a terminal MA are discussed. She quotes a 2002 StatCan report that found that MAs earned an average of 33 per cent more than BAs, but PhDs earned only eight per cent more than MAs. Keep in mind that these are stats, and refer only to the elusive ‘norm’. I’m sure that once these numbers gets broken down into professional fields and academic disciplines, the picture gets much murkier.

But it does point to an interesting paradox in our knowledge-addicted society. We strongly believe innovation and creativity are intrinsic to our future well being. That’s why we admire smart people – after all, really smart people are kinda hard to overlook. We will spend ridiculous amounts of time and money ‘upgrading’ our kids’ education to give them a competitive edge in whatever opportunities we hope lie ahead. We think spending tax dollars on ensuring equal access to university is a good thing. We brag about our kids’ academic achievements. As employers, we hold a BA as a rite of passage into most decent entry-level positions. An MA is increasingly taking the place of a BA in terms of the job market in some fields like business and social work. But once we get to the PhD, everything changes.

A PhD in the non-academic job market is often viewed at the same level as a refugee – someone who needed to escape or was forced out of their homeland and now needs to start over. There can be a little bit of suspicion about why they didn’t or couldn’t make it as a professor. There is also that old stereotype about smart people – that they are socially maladaptive or do anything useful in the real world.

Unfortunately, it’s that last one that does the most damage to PhDs. Not because it is so common anymore – it’s not really. It’s that ultimately, we tend believe that it is true – that we can’t really do anything well if we haven’t accrued years of experience. This is one of the unpleasant side effects of spending so long in an environment where our expertise is so often and deeply questioned and tested.

I think we are less than a generation away from a radical reduction in the tendency to question the value of a PhD in our society, not just our universities, especially in Canada where such a large proportion of our society now earns a university degree at some level. But until then, any graduating PhD would probably benefit from some career support around re-articulating their academic experiences in non-academic terms.

It is undoubtedly true that expertise requires time to develop, both inside and outside academic workplaces. But in the non-academic world, the individual characteristics and demonstrated abilities of a person are usually much more significant than what they happen to know at the moment of hiring. Ultimately, this is true in academe as well, but rarely acknowledged. The difference between a lengthy CV and a succinct resume illustrates this well.

Both PhDs and employers need to stop and reconsider which stereotypes are influencing their reluctance to understand each other better. Why do so few employers have specialized fast-track career paths for PhDs entering their fields? Why do so few PhDs believe that non-academic careers can be just as stimulating and in many cases more lucrative than academic jobs? Why are we still reading articles wondering about the relevancy of a PhD in a knowledge-based economy?

Perhaps academics spend so much time analyzing the past because the future is too slippery to grasp. Predictions about the future of the academic job market have swung wildly across the pendulum from extreme pessimism to extreme optimism for 50 years now. Throughout this time, prospective and graduating PhD students have sorely tried to make sound career decisions. But with no reliable data, these have been almost impossible to make.

It is with this in mind that I read a recent article in the Chronicle that asked seven scholars across a range of areas and ages how they think the academic workplace — particularly the job satisfaction and expectations of a faculty career — will change over the next 20 years. Not surprisingly, the responses reflect shades of the opinion spectrum that continues to plague academe. But in spite of this, I still recommend giving it a quick read. Not for its predictive qualities, but because collectively they seem to capture much of what I believe lies ahead in the academic workforce.

Granted, workforces in every sector are facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty, except perhaps the Armed Forces. But this is academe, and the ivory tower has always felt ‘apart’ from the proletariat when it came to such mundane matters as finding jobs. It has never really acknowledged that the 1960s hiring boom was an extraordinary, never-to-be-repeated phenomenon, clinging instead to a pre-fluvial fantasy that such days of abundance will one day return.

Nonetheless, the unthinkable has happened. The academic community finally seems to have turned its critical eye on itself and discovered that far from a gleaming ivory, its towers are a muddy grey, not to mention more than a little decrepit. And centuries of ivy have grown weed infested and are now in need of a good pruning. The university is undergoing perhaps one of its greatest transformations in living memory and what it is transforming into is anybody’s guess as the Chronicle article illustrates. The question is: do you still want to be a part of it? Either way, how does one plan for a future when the future seems so unknowable?

Slippery though predicting the future may be, it is clear that no matter where on the pendulum you congregate, you cannot bank on a tenured position, on being able to land decent and sustainable research funding, or on having classes of students who genuinely want to learn what you have to teach them. If the only certainty is uncertainty, then the only possible response is to be flexible and open to new possibilities no matter the sector in which they emerge. Judging by the perspectives of some of the Chronicle’s clairvoyants, you may well be awfully grateful not to be in academe when all is said in done.

Ah, the lazy days of summer. While the rest of the world is slowing down a notch, socializing more and planning vacations, PhDs nearing the end of their degrees are deep in, what is for many, the most stressful summer of their lives.

Whether you are about to defend your thesis or have just experienced that happy event, it’s hard to forget that looming ahead of you are months of rigorous job searching. It’s a good time to sit down with the people closest to you and really clarify the parameters of what you are and are not willing to do to stay in academe. Pick up a sessional contract or two – but for how long? Would you leave the country for a temporary contract? What about a tenure track position? How about leaving the continent – would you have to end a relationship to do that?

These are life-altering decisions, and can involve relatively unpleasant conversations at a time when there is already a lot of stress and uncertainty in your life. But it is useful to have your non-negotiables sorted out before you start sending off application packages – especially in this economy.

So no matter how much is on your plate right now, pick an evening – or a couple – and get together with people who support you and have a vested interest in your happiness to have dinner and talk through the issues that are weighing most heavily on you. Get their objective feedback, but don’t shy away from the non-objective opinions – they are sometimes the ones that make the most difference in the long run.  Repeat this process as necessary to get to that place where you know what you are really willing to consider once you are on the market.

Then, and only then, will you be able to realistically assess the suitability of the postings you see so you aren’t desperately applying for anything regardless of how it flies in the face of your values and priorities. Many very unhappy academics have done just that, feeling like there was no other choice. They were wrong – there are literally thousands of non-academic possibilities that would provide a standard of living and quality of professional satisfaction that far exceeds any so-so academic position.

If you are committed to an academic career, now is the time to start getting ready for the fall hiring season. Read over the links below, get advice from your committee and university career centre, update your CV, and go shopping for “interview” clothes. Some of you will land up with a job offer, and a few of you will be lucky enough to find a terrific position in a terrific university. By all means, give it your best shot, but be honest with yourself all the while as to how far you are ready to pursue this path before you go on to seek greener pastures.  Bonne chance!

Getting Ready for an Academic Job Search – University of Michigan
Getting Ready for an Academic Job Search – University of Windsor
Building a Network – University of Pennsylvania
The Hiring Process form the Other Side – UC Berkeley